i'm not gonna write you a love song
by singsongsung
Summary: A tag to The Substitute. PQ. "And then there was her mouth, lips perfectly glossed and singing, right at him – forget you."


**A/N:** I want to write more PQ, and I'm working with getting more comfortable with them. There was a moment between them during "Forget You" that I couldn't stop thinking about, and then this happened.

* * *

**i'm not gonna write you a love song**

* * *

He's in one hell of a bad mood.

Glee club is stupid, their substitute teacher – and her porn star name (but maybe not her legs under that inappropriately short skirt) – is _stupid_, this whole goddamn school is stupid. It's enough to give him the strange, nostalgic desire to pick Artie and his wheelchair up off the ground and throw both into the nearest dumpster.

He knows the cause of the way he's feeling. He could pinpoint every fucking reason, and he could point out the source of all those reasons – she's walking down the hallway right now, hips swaying under that sinfully short skirt, ponytail bouncing confidently, one hand tucked into another guy's.

* * *

It just _got_ to him.

That sassy side of her personality, the one he used to be able to ignite so easily, so artfully (_'sup, milf?_) – it was there, shining on her face and in her smile as she wagged a finger in the air and jutted her chin out, the queen of high school hierarchy once again. He used to think it _meant_ something, when he saw her face like that early in the morning when she was wearing his old t-shirts, her hair all mussed up from pressing against his pillow through the night, her body rounded with their baby; he used to think that badass, snarky Quinn was reserved specifically for him to look at.

But she was right there in the choir room, sandwiched in between Brittany and Santana like the good old golden days, arms in the air and hips working beneath her skirt: _free_.

She was all legs and confidence and that pretty (that _stupidly_ pretty) voice of hers ringing through the air, chin tilted in the air because she knew, in that moment, just how much power she had. She was there, that girl, his girl – and she kept stealing glances at the new kid.

Puck is a big boy, and he handled juvie, so he could've handled this, but then all of a sudden it was just too much. It was too much, Sam's eyes fixed on her face and then a moment later, her arm in the air and her fingers snapping and that glint in her eyes, that mischievous, powerful glint that he knew all too well. It was all there, and then there was her mouth, lips perfectly glossed and singing, right at him –

_Forget you._

* * *

There are some things you don't come out of unchanged, unscathed.

Warfare, for instance. Or having a baby with Quinn Fabray.

* * *

He doesn't know how to get over a girl.

The truth is that he's never had to do it before, he's never cared so much that letting go became such an impossibility.

He can't ask Finn for a help – even though Finn must have gone through the same thing, it was with the same girl, and there are still parts of last year that are dangerous to touch. He's not about to go to Mr. Schue; the man's life is more of a mess than Puck's has ever been and his ex-wife is certifiably crazy, if not a potentially decent cougar.

All he has, all he knows, is Quinn in the hallways and the memories of all the hushed conversations they had, his heart hammering in his chest.

She hadn't quite been his, but he'd had a part of her. A part of her that she'd given up, tossed aside.

Forgotten about.

* * *

He knows what the lyrics of that song are, really, when they're not singing it in high school.

_Fuck you_ – he thinks of Quinn and her mouth and her skin and her body all laid out on her bed, the way she'd melted under his touch, the way her mouth had tasted of cheap coolers, the way she was so much _girl_, perfect girl, that for a moment he wondered if they should wait.

But she was tipsy and shivering when he touched her, her eyes half-closed as she watched him warily from under her eyelashes; by Puck's math, he would never have another chance.

* * *

She's living with her mom again, so it's a risk, going to her house – Puck's pretty sure he's still public enemy number one around a mother whose daughter he impregnated.

But the honest, stupid truth is that he needs to see her.

He throws rocks at her window like some sort of Romeo, standing in the garden behind her house. The flowers around him are dying; the moon is one quarter full.

"_Puck_," she hisses, window flying upward and her elbows against the sill, all that blonde hair tumbling around her face and onto her shoulders.

He lifts his arms. "Come down here."

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me." He can see, even from this distance, the elegant way that her eyebrows arch.

"I'm serious," he huffs.

"Are you_ drunk_?"

"Q! Dammit. Come down here." His whole body is thrumming with…_something_. Anxiousness or need or – it's not love, it doesn't matter, "Would you please just fucking come down here?"

She pushes her hair out of her face, looks down at him with eyes he can't quite see. "You'll wake the neighbourhood, Puckerman."

"I don't care." He feels ridiculous; he _is_ ridiculous.

Quinn laughs and it startles him. When he looks up at her again he sees that she's straightened up and that she's now leaning one hip against the window sill, her arms crossed over the thin tank top that she's wearing to bed. "Say what you need to say," she says, patiently.

"I…" Puck drove to her house, climbed over the fence into the garden, and stood here chucking pebbles at her window – but he never planned what he would say to her.

"You?" she prompts, voice soft.

"No," he say abruptly, "_We._ We had a baby."

Even outside, even a floor below her, he can _feel_ the way she bristles at those words.

She slams her window shut.

* * *

She storms out into her lawn, heavy boots on underneath the tiny, tight shorts she apparently wears to bed when it's not _his_ bed she's sleeping in. She's carrying her pillow, which he doesn't understand until she smacks him with it.

"Hey!"

Her eyes are golden, glowing like fire. "You woke me up and you're risking making a scene just to tell me something I _already know_? Do you think I missed nine months of pregnancy and the experience of pushing a baby out of my _body_? I know. I know that we had a baby."

"Do you?"

"What are you – "

He closes the distance between them, takes steps until his body is right in front of hers, his chest less than an inch away from hers, both of them breathing heavily.

"I don't know that you know, because you're acting like you _forgot_."

Quinn stares at him for a moment, fiery and free and his again, in this millisecond; he could reach out and touch her, and kiss her.

And then she laughs. She breathes out this pretty, melancholy sound and her laughter keeps bubbling up even though he's sure he can see tears sparkling in her eyes.

"You," she gasps, "are a moron."

That's just salt to his wounds, so he does the only thing that feels like it makes any sense – he sits down, right there in the dewy grass in the middle of the night.

"Puck." Standing over him, backlit by the quarter-moon, she looks larger than life. "Puck, it was a song."

"Yeah." He blinks up at her, starting to feel drunk even though he _knows_ he's entirely sober. "And you sang it to me."

"Everyone sang it to everyone."

It feels like she's not listening to him and he has to resist the urge to yell. "_You_ sang it to _me_."

Something in her eyes softens. "Go home, Puck," she says, and before he can protest she raises her voice just a bit and tells him, "Behave yourself and maybe someday I'll sing you something else."

* * *

He spends a good two minutes just staring at her, trying to decipher her words and trying to ignore the way her lips are pursed. It's not until she turns on her heel and stalks back inside that he blurts, "You sure you won't forget?"

(He sounds _needy_ and like a thrown-away boyfriend and this is all so stupid – )

Quinn laughs without turning around and he watches the lines of her legs, the look of her ass in those tiny shorts, the way she flicks a wrist into the air.

"Fuck you," she says softly, like an afterthought.

* * *

Puck sits in her garden, under a slip of moonlight, and he laughs for ages.

It's as easy as it's ever been, to pretend she's his.

* * *

**fin**


End file.
